Come meet me at Wizard World Philadelphia (June 2–4 only)

Hello! If you’re in the area, come meet me at Wizard World Philadelphia with Phil Kahn of Guilded Age. We’ll be at Booth 1702. NOTE: I will only be there from June 2–4. No Thursday preview for me. (Here’s a floor plan for your planning pleasure.)

Learn more at the official Wizard World Philadelphia site! If you use the coupon code GUILDED, you can get 20% off your advanced ticket orders.

I will have copies of the brand-spankin’-new, not-even-officially-released Multiplex: The Revenge (Book Three) in tow, draw sketches (for monies), and if my iPad has any juice in it, I’ll show you some behind the scenes stuff from the Multiplex 10 short, too.

Multiplex 10: the animated short is now (officially) in pre-production

Thanks to 572 generous backers, Multiplex 10: the animated short has raised over $19,000 on Kickstarter. After payment processing and Kickstarter fees, this amounts to a production and distribution budget of $17,000 and change — still very low-budget for animation… but we have the resources to make it look and sound excellent.

We’ll continue to look at other avenues for helping fund the distribution of the short, but now we have a firm production budget: we’ll be producing the animation in 2K. (This will make it easy to output the animation in 4K should we get additional funding later.) And while it was part of the $20,000 stretch goal that we didn’t reach, we’ll make room in the budget for that 5.1 surround sound mix.

Thanks to my awesome cast and crew, Dana Shaw, Joe Dunn, Tom Brazelton, Chris Rager, Javier Prusky, Tangelene Bolton, Ian Vargo, and our most recent addition Aiyanna Wade for helping spread the word on the project throughout the funding period.

Although most of the really good stuff will be exclusive to the Kickstarter updates, keep your eyes peeled here for occasional comics featuring the Multiplex 10 staff, as well as news and updates on the production.

Going into the final day… (and some Producer-level rewards rejiggering)

As we get closer to the FINAL twenty-four hours of the Multiplex 10 Kickstarter project, I’m thrilled with how much we’ve raised — but I’d like to make one attempt at sweetening the producer-level ($900+) reward levels in hopes that someone will swoop in for one of those at the last minute.

I’ve nixed the early bird discounts and added a few extras:

THE ASSOCIATE PRODUCER ($900) — Get a credit as an Associate Producer in the finished short (instead of the Special Thanks) and a special Multiplex 10 crew T-shirt — PLUS all the lower level rewards!

THE CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCER ($1200) — Get a credit as a Co-Executive Producer in the finished short (instead of the Special Thanks) and a full-sized (27″x40″-ish) printed Multiplex 10 poster — PLUS all the lower level rewards!

THE EXECUTIVE PRODUCER ($2000) — Get a credit as an Executive Producer in the finished short (instead of the Special Thanks), your production company logo after the credits (I’ll design and animate one for you if you don’t have one already), and dinner with the director (in Somerville, MA; transportation not provided) — PLUS all the lower level rewards!

The Multiplex 10 crew shirts will be the Multiplex 10 Cinemas logo on the front in black, with your credit on the back:

Head over the Kickstarter project page to see ALL of the rewards levels!

Multiplex 10: the comic book?! (addition to the $20k stretch goal)

The Multiplex 10 Kickstarter project ends in TWO DAYS. (Sunday, May 7th, at 11pm Central, to be precise. Kickstarter rounds down.) Right now, we’re thisclose to $17,000 — nearly 40% of the way to our first and only stretch goal (so far).

I wanted to help encourage a few Multiplex readers who loved the webcomic but haven’t pledged to support the animated short by adding a new reward onto that $20,000 stretch goal: a Multiplex 10 comic ebook free to all $25+ Kickstarter backers. I’ve run a few “story comics” over at the Multiplex 10 site (two of which also ran here), and I will be a few more of those no matter what, but this stretch goal/reward will add even more new comics and make the ebook into essentially an “episode zero” of the animated series.

It will be at least 16 pages long, with the existing comic strips and new material  slightly reformatted into a single, continuous story rather than a collection of comic strips like the Multiplex Chapter eBooks.

Multiplex 10: the animated short is FUNDED!!!

Thanks to Phat Do and 477 other backers and also the one person who just pledged since I started typing this — the Multiplex 10 animated pilot is FUNDED!

I think I can safely speak for the cast & crew and say that we are incredibly thrilled to have this opportunity to bring Kurt and Jason and the rest of the Multiplex 10 gang to life. Thank you so much for all your support.

What’s even better is that we still have four days to go! As I’ve said before, the more money we raise, the better the short can be.

We do have one official stretch goal. At $20,000, we’ll be able to add…

  • Smoother, 4K animation (involving a couple of additional animators)
  • 5.1 Surround Sound mix
  • A theatrical premiere at the Somerville Theatre here in Somerville, MA. (All backers at the Special Thanks level and up will have free admission, though you will need to RSVP. Transportation is not provided.)

And, of course, the more money we raise, the more money we have to promote and distribution the finished short — which will help increase our chances of producing MORE Multiplex 10.

Thank you, again. This is going to be fun.